


Shot through the heart (now whose to blame?)

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Bay Movies)
Genre: Brotherly Love, Doctor Donatello (TMNT), Family Dynamics, Gen, Good Older Sibling Leonardo (TMNT), Hurt Michelangelo (TMNT), Hurt/Comfort, Missions Gone Wrong, Protective Older Brothers, Protective Raphael (TMNT), Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 02:09:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20685749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: April and Casey were waiting in the lair for the turtles to return and were busying themselves in the meantime by helping Master Splinter re-organise their home while his overly boisterous and sometimes destructive children were on patrol, and Casey had just managed to place the final box of candles in its place when frantic yelling and the heavy sounds of many running feet echoed down the tunnel and suddenly the whole place was alight with sound and action.





	Shot through the heart (now whose to blame?)

**Author's Note:**

> So I pretty much only wrote this because someone commented on one of my other TMNT fics that it was stereotypical and stupid and that 'of course you would force a problem like money onto them, as if mutant turtles would ever need money' and 'people like you always make Donnie hardworking and incapable even when that's not true' and stuff like that, so I wrote another fic just to prove to myself that that isn't all I know how to write, and I wrote this one to say a big mighty up yours to that guy, because I like hurting everyone equally. So here you go- a fic where Mikey is in serious amounts of pain and it's up to his brothers to take care of him. I hope you like it better than that dude did. AND YES I KNOW THAT'S NOT HOW THE SONG GOES FOR THE TITLE DONT @ ME IGHT
> 
> Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it x

April and Casey were waiting in the lair for the turtles to return and were busying themselves in the meantime by helping Master Splinter re-organise their home while his overly boisterous and sometimes destructive children were on patrol, and Casey had just managed to place the final box of candles in its place when frantic yelling and the heavy sounds of many running feet echoed down the tunnel and suddenly the whole place was alight with sound and action.

Donnie, his hands and torso stained in blood, was constantly looking back over his shoulder as Leo and Raph, the strongest and largest of the turtles, carried a barely conscious and profusely bleeding Mikey between them, grunting with the effort. “Come on!” Donnie cried, voice high pitched and reedy. “Hurry, bring him to the med-bay, I need to get my gear!”

Diligently, Leo and Raph carried a moaning Mike into the med-bay as Don rushed off in search of whatever gear he was looking for. Master Splinter had already followed his three other sons into the med-bay but just as Casey was about to rush off and do the same, April had a realisation and grabbed his arm before he could get too far. “Go help Don,” she told him. “If what he’s looking for is in the lair, we might have moved it to a different place.” Nodding, Casey sprinted away to go help search.

When April finally, tentatively entered the med-bay, she was met by both the larger turtles trying to hold their youngest brother down as he screamed and thrashed on the cot. “Leo,” he moaned, eyes squeezed tight and sweat perspiring on his brow. “Leo, it _hurts.”_

“I know, but just hold on a little longer. Don’s gonna make you all better, alright?” Leo promised before he turned to face the door again and shouted, “How’s it going out there, Donnie?”

The words were barely out of his mouth before his brother was at the door with a wild, fearful look in his eyes, Casey hot on his heels. He paused in the doorway, eyes wide and panicked as he took in the awful sight before him, his two older brothers holding Mikey down, the blood coating Mikey’s skin and his brother’s blood dribbling down the table, his baby brother screaming in pain as he writhed on the too-small table, and he spurred himself back into action with a thick gulp of heavy air. “Out!” he cried, pushing his way into the room and trying to shove his brothers away from Mikey. “Guys, you need to go, I can’t work with you here!”

His brothers tried to protest but before they could convince him to change his mind, Donnie shoved them out the room and slammed the door in their faces, the lock meeting home on the other side of the door. Panicked mumbling and the shifting of many tools could be heard through the heavy metal door.

Growling, Raph stormed over to the closest object and threw a tattered wicker chair across the lair to shatter into tiny pieces when it collided with the wall, and immediately hunched over with his arm wrapped around his middle, breathing hard through grit teeth. Leo watched him with pursed lips for a moment before he sighed through his nose and sat down on one of the many workout benches found across the lair, gripping his shoulder, eyes shut tight.

It was Casey who broke the tense silence in the lair by exclaiming what they were all thinking, “Alright, does anyone want to tell us what the hell happened out there?”

Like a switch being flicked, the worried mood in the room changed instantly to one of anger and contention as Raph whirled around to face Leo who just grit his teeth and bent his head as if in preparation for what was to come. “It was Leo’s damn fault!” Raph roared. “If he hadn’t stuck his big head in other people’s business instead of focusing on the work at hand than none of this ever would have happened!”

“That’s a load of bullshit Raph and you know it!” Leo snapped but before the arguing could continue, the heavy metal door that led to the med-bay swung open and the sound of something heavy whipping through the air to impact loudly on the ground broke the silence and when they turned towards the sound, they saw Master Splinter there, face gaunt and hands clasped at his front, tail swishing against the ground.

“Enough,” he said, his voice loud but strained. “That’s enough now.”

Raph was the first to react, the slamming of the swinging door behind his father snapping him out of his thoughts. “How’s Mikey?”

“Stable. Your brother is caring for him for now,” Splinter looked around the room with hardened eyes. “What happened?”

Sighing, Leo collapsed back against the wall like all the fight had drained out of him. “We were just trying to stake out the Shredders hideout. We didn’t know that the Shredder had hired the Purple Dragons gang. Mikey was paying more attention than I was and he saw the guns before I did.” He hung his head and shifted uncomfortably. “He jumped in front of me and took the bullet before I had even realised what was happening.” His voice was low and filled with pain. Behind him, Raph was uncharacteristically quiet.

If they had expected their father to be mad, he definitely wasn’t- He just heaved a heavy sigh and pointed his cane between Raph and Leo. “That is a separate discussion we will have with Michelangelo when he awakes. But for now- your brother tells me that the two of you were also injured in the scuffle. You must take care of your wounds without the help of Donatello for now, but I am sure he would be glad to help afterwards.”

“Where are you going?” Leo asked as his father hobbled past him on his cane.

“To meditate in my chambers,” came Splinter’s now far away voice. And then they were gone and the others were alone, straining to hear the panicked mutterings of their brother in through the med-bay door. Glancing around the room, April caught sight of Leo wincing as he held his shoulder and she belatedly sprang into action, reaching for one of the many first-aid kits scattered around the lair and joined Leo on the bench.

Casey, taking Aprils lead, walked up to Raph and carefully pulled his arm away from his torso. “Mikey got shot- I read that part loud and clear. What happened to you guys?”

“It’s a little hard to avoid flying bullets and weapons coming at your face when you’re a giant green target,” Raph shot back, shoving Casey away. “Sometimes things happen and it’s out of your control.”

At the vague answer, Leo rolled his eyes and dimly watched as April opened the med-kit, pulled out a roll of bandages and began to gradually unwind them. “We all tried to get to Mikey as fast as we could, but we forgot for a moment that they were still shooting at us, so it stopped being us needing to protect our brother and became more us needing to protect each other so Donnie could reach Mikey unharmed. We knew that if something happened to Don that the statistics of Mikey surviving would be much lower than we wanted, so we were happy to take the hits.”

April pursed her lips as she analysed Leo’s shoulder. “It looks like you’ve been cut petty deep,” she said, “There may be something stuck in here. I don’t think I’ll be able to pull it out, but I can stop the bleeding until Donnie is done.”

Nodding, Leo diligently let April gently wind the bandage around the wound and didn’t even flinch when she tightened it. Across the room, Casey had finally managed to subdue Raph enough to take a look at his middle, which was also gushing blood. “I’m going to need some bandages over here too, April,” he called. “Raph’s bleeding. I think he was stabbed.”

“Well, why don’t you _ask_ him?” April suggested, exasperated, as she tossed handfuls of rolled up bandages at him.

“You think I’m going to be able to ask him anything and get a straight answer?” Casey retorted as he bent down to gather up all the bandages he dropped.

Wincing, Raph shoved Casey away with all his strength, but since he was tired, it wasn’t very much. If Casey had been one of his brothers, he wouldn’t have moved an inch, but he was just a normal human, and he was nearly knocked onto his ass. “Get lost, Case. ‘m fine.”

“Raph, enough,” Leo snapped. “Stop being so difficult and let him help.”

Reluctantly, Raph sat back and let Casey get close enough to carefully wind the bandage around his middle, grumbling under his breath about ungrateful turtles. April glanced over and winced as she saw the blood immediately soaking through the fresh white bandages. “You guys both might need stitches.” She said. “And I know how to sow holes in clothing, but leathery turtle skin is a different problem altogether.”

“Don’t look at me,” Casey grunted from mostly under Raph. “I make a living out of breaking things, not fixing them.”

Leo placed a hand on April’s shoulder, not the one that she was currently making sure had no broken fingers. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve done more than enough, both of you. We’ll get Don to take a look when he’s done with Mikey.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Casey said, unhelpfully, “But I think that’s going to take a while. You guys never do anything half-assed, and that included getting your shells kicked to next week.”

Raph growled in pure frustration. “If I ever see the Purple Dragon who did this to him, I’m going to break every bone in his body and then make the rest of those scum-bags watch as I rip him apart."

There was silence after that, even Casey knew well enough when to keep his mouth shut. They listened intently to Donnie working on the other side of that unbreakable steel door, mumbling to himself and clanging tools around in their metal pans. Leo paced back and forth despite April trying to make him sit down, his arms behind his back as much as he was able. Raph, exhausted, stayed leaning against the table, his head hanging so low that his chin was resting on his chest.

April was sitting against the wall with her knees pulled up to her chest and Casey sat on the arm of a chair with his legs spread, twirling a baseball bat between his hands and every now and then they glanced over at each other and shared a mirrored look of concern.

It felt like forever before the sounds of movement stopped and it took even longer for them to decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but eventually, the sound of the heavy lock moving out of the latch and the metal door swinging slowly open made them jump up and spin towards the med-bay.

Eventually, Donnie trudged out, his hands red raw from scrubbing his brother's blood away from his skin, some of the cracks between his scales a little darker than usual from where he hadn’t managed to get it all. He looked exhausted, and ran a heavy hand down his face, his glasses skewed on the top of his head, a bag slung over his shoulder. “He’s fine,” he said before anyone could ask. He knew his family well. “He’s sleeping, finally. I had to give him something when I started getting desperate. He’s talking and eating and cracking jokes. No training for a couple of weeks and no patrol for twice as long. All the bullets are out, and he’s made me keep them so he can have a souvenir when he wakes up.”

His brothers were already relaxing before Donnie had even finished speaking like a weight had been lifted from their shoulders. “Don, you’re a lifesaver,” Raph praised. “Literally.”

But Don didn’t stop walking once he had given his announcement, and instead walked up to Leo and dragged him over to where Raph was already sitting. “Good. April and Casey already bound you up, which means I know where you’re hurt, which means you can’t lie about it and tell me not to worry.”

As Don started to unwind the work that April and Casey had painstakingly applied and the brothers protested to no luck, Casey called out. “Raph’s cut deep- might need stitches, and Leo might have a chunk of some sort of metal in his arm.”

Raph glared at him. _“You’re not helping.”_

“He is, actually,” Donnie replied as he unwound the bandage around Raph’s waist with a lot less effort then Casey did. “Very much so.”

“Donnie, stop,” Leo said gently. “You’ve been up all day, and you’ve been working hard. You were on your feet the whole time on patrol today. You’ve just spent hours taking care of Mikey. Why don’t you go and take care of yourself for a little while? No one would blame you or judge you if you did. God knows you’ve earned it.”

Sighing heavily through his nose, Donnie shook his head and began to pull basic equipment out of his shoulder bag. “Leo, I know you’re trying to look out for me, but nothing would make me feel better right now rather than looking after you two. I’ve just pulled bullets out of my baby brother. My only younger brother. It’s been a tough day. If you give me 20 minutes, I can take care of you, and then take the longest nap of my life. But if I don’t look after you, then I won’t stop worrying and I won’t be able to calm down enough to get to sleep at all. So please, just give me these 20 minutes, and I swear to god, I won’t be waking up any time soon.”

Reluctantly, both Raph and Leo settled back and let Donnie do what he needed to do, and again, Casey and April exchanged a look. “Wow, Don,” April said. “You’re being awfully calm about all of this. You’re usually ranting and panicking like no tomorrow by now. What’s wrong?”

“I’m so tired, April,” Donnie replied easily. “I’m too tired to have any sort of emotion at the moment. It’s been a very long and stressful day. Right now, all I want to do is make sure my brothers are going to last the night and not die from blood loss in their sleep so I can hide away and pass out somewhere. I’m too tired to be panicked, and honestly, it’s a nice feeling.”

Casey snorted. “Don’t get too used to it. We need you clear-headed so you can fix all our messes.”

Donnie laughed half-heartedly in return. “Leo?” he glanced up at his oldest brother. “I know you’re the leader and all, but can I suggest… I think we all need a break from training tomorrow. All of us. I think we just need a day or something, or maybe… I don’t know. A break.”

Smiling slightly, Leo placed a comforting hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Of course, Donnie, great idea. We’ll all need to recover. Like you said- it’s been a long night. We all need a break.”

Looking relieved, Donnie continued to take care of his brothers, expertly stitching them up and pulling pieces of metal from their wounds, and soon he packed away his tools and sighed deeply, his shoulders relaxing. “Right,” he said mostly to himself. “I’m going to take a nap now. You are all free to see Mikey whenever you want, but for the love of God, please don’t wake him.”

And then he was gone, trudging off towards his room in a desperate attempt to sleep, his head hanging low. Raph and Leo watched him walk off and disappear around the corner until it was just the four of them alone in the chamber with the door to where Mikey was currently resting, hurt but alive, was wide open. Raph looked longingly towards it. “I wonder when he’ll wake up?”

“Go on,” April nudged him. “Go see him. We’ll be alright out here. We know our way around his place by now- we’ll show ourselves out.”

Sending her a grateful look, Raph rushed past her, sparing just a moment to fist bump Casey on the way past, and then his retreating shell vanished through the open doorway. Leo sent her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, we’re just really worried.”

“Don’t sweat it, man,” Casey said as he walked forwards and wrapped his arms around April. “You need to be with your family. We totally understand.”

“You guys are our family. Never forget that.” Leo said as he turned and followed Raph into the med-bay.

Eventually, April and Casey were alone in the wide chamber, listening to the mumbled conversation from the med-bay, heavy snoring from the direction of Donnie’s room and total silence from the area Master Splinter occupied for his mediation. Casey rocked back and forth with April still in his arms. “Well, this is one of those days that’ll go down in the history books.”

“History books?” April made a face. “For what?”

“As one of the most hectic days in the history of hectic days,” he replied and April couldn’t help but laugh. She hadn’t even done anything and she was absolutely exhausted, a kind of bone-tired that she hadn’t felt in a very long time. It might have been the worry. “Are you ready to get the hell out of dodge?”

“Yeah,” she sighed, leaning against him. “Let’s go home.”

On their way out, inches from the exit, they heard Mikey say loudly from the med-bay, “Wait, dude, Donnie actually kept the bullets? I was only joking! Holy shit, I'm going to get them polished and frame them up over my bed somewhere, this is so cool! Donnie? Donnie! _You're the best bro_!” Right then, they realized that everything was going to be OK.

**Author's Note:**

> Belatedly, this is for one of my oldest friends Ashleigh, who had her birthday yesterday and I didn't put up the fic I wrote for her, so I'm going to do this instead. I took a big leap and told Ash about my writing, and even sent her the link to this account, so while she's scrolling through and reading my shitty fics, she'll probably come across this. Hey Ash, I love you, thanks for not being weird about this x


End file.
